


a lost chance

by Nimravidae



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anguished Declations of Love, Cheating, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 02:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11773620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nimravidae/pseuds/Nimravidae
Summary: Angelica is leaving, and she's yet to tell her lover. More a character study.





	a lost chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Red_Room](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Red_Room/gifts).



The cold wash of the first dredges of daylight set a perfectly monotonous tone for another morning that could have been plucked out of a lineup of every other morning that Angelica has had. She turns her alarm off as she slips out of bed, John shifting under the duvet and rolling away from the sound in his sleep. She dances around the mess of their bedroom with a practiced ease, making a promise to herself that she knows she won’t adhere to to finally remember to clean up a little when she gets home from work. 

There’s coffee, the same coffee, the same way with a mug from the same matching set her mother gave her after she’d found out she’d gotten married.  _ “I would have gotten something nicer,”  _ she’d said, that tense smile showing far too much of her perfectly white teeth,  _ “If you’d told us you were getting married.”  _

But nice wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want the same sprawling, writhing, monster of a wedding that Eliza had. A Schuyler wedding was a fucking monstrosity that was always funded by her father, who then saw fit to flex his checkbook as an excuse to wiggle whatever politician he was trying to swindle for campaign cash onto the invite list. 

She’s fairly certain he hasn’t forgiven her for robbing him of that chance by marrying John down in a courthouse with her former roommate as a witness. Angelica sips her coffee at the chipped kitchen table, slotting her nail into the crack in the varnishing just to feel the dip. She regrets a lot of things in her life, but marrying John isn’t one of them. He’s sweet, he’s loving, he’s successful. He’s a good husband with a good heart and she’s glad she was dating him when that latent spike of teenage rebellion finally struck her at age twenty-one.

Could’ve done worse in terms of marriage, she supposes. Could’ve done better, though. 

John gets up. She can hear him grunting and mumbling to himself as he fumbles his way to the bathroom to shower. He’ll take a fast shower and rant about how late he’s going to be while he fills his old to-go mug with coffee and darts out the door. Angelica will get dressed, make sure she’s got all her paperwork in her laptop bag, wait until just the right time where she’s not going to be waiting for her bus long enough to be tempted by the siren call of a chocolate chip muffin from the bodega across the corner. 

Just like every other morning. She gets up when the water cuts out in the bathroom, abandoning her mug for her later self, and starts in on the processes of picking out her outfit. It’s not like there’s much in the way of options, however. Washington likes his associates to not wear flashy colors or statement pieces of anything, which limits her to wearing suits of varied shades of charcoal gray and hissing at Alexander when he shows up with perfectly-matched emerald ties or cufflinks that catch the glint of the shitty office lighting. 

Alex gets to dress to catch eyes even if she joined the firm a solid six months before he did, hired on by George as a favor to her and Eliza’s father. She’s annoyed at the thought of him as she hangs the outfit she’s wearing today on the hook outside her closet. John practically trips over his own feet on the way out of the bathroom, leaving behind him a thick trail of steam. 

“I’m gonna be so fucking late,” he hisses, by way of greeting. Just like every morning before. Of course, there were little differences. Like the half-packed boxes in the corner of their living room, the fact that everything was slowly, slowly, moving into piles of keep or trash or donate. She chews her lip as John vanishes into the kitchen.

Maybe she should tell her parents today. Or her sisters. Or Alex.

Alex would like to know, she knows that. He’ll kick himself for not noticing earlier, he’ll throw a fit that she didn’t feel like telling him. But so would Eliza and Peggy, and Mom and Dad. Her lips pinch into a frown. The longer she puts it off, the bigger it gets when she finally caves and tells them about the new job.

But the bigger it gets, the more she really doesn’t want to fucking do it. Flopping back onto the bed, she closes her eyes for just a second, mapping out all the possibilities on the back of her eyelids. Her mom will scowl and say it’s just like the wedding all over again, Eliza will break into tears, Peggy will offer her help but cold-shoulder her to avoid the emotions, her dad would be upset, but proud once he hears of the real opportunity she’s getting. And Alex. Alex.

Alex. 

He might be mad, he might not be. Although she doesn’t know if it would piss him off more to know he was losing an extra body to fuck, or that he was losing a friend. Both, probably. John slams the cabinet doors in the kitchen, looking for something but she couldn’t care less. She hikes the loose fabric of her sleep-shirt up and strokes the skin of her stomach, dragging her fingers along the divots of stretch marks that carved out when she hit a growth spurt in high school. 

She follows them up past her navel, to her ribcage. Alex would be mad, she decides. He’d shout and snark at her until he got all up in her face, until he’d burn himself out. Her fingers trace up her skin, up and up and up--Alex would lose all his rage with the same ferocity with which he gained it. It would drain out of him and drip down onto the floor and he’d collapse, forward, onto her. He would hold her, cling to her, beg her to stay there when he can touch her.

The lock clicks in the front door when John leaves and Angelica drags her hand back down. She’s got plenty of time, she thinks, as she shoves her pajama bottoms and panties down in one go. Her hand pats its way to the drawer of her nightstand and in her mind, Alex pleads with her. 

_ Angie come on, don’t go,  _ he’d whine into her collar, kissing her throat.  _ Stay here with me. I’ll put you up in a nice studio, Eliza’ll never know. _

She’ll feel bad, she should feel bad right now. Hard ridged silicone buzzes to life under her fingers. She's almost late for work.  

By the time she finishes tucking herself into her outfit and gets herself finally into the office, she gets almost an hour of peace she quiet before her WhatsApp pings and she knows it's him. It's always him. He's the only person who uses it because he's the person who can't text her, because he's the only married man she's sleeping with. She ignores him until he swings into the office, down obviously on his way to Washington, but he grinds to a halt by her desk. No one looks up. No one raises an eyebrow. No one cares.

Alex croons down at her between his million dollar smile and flashy Rolex, “Hey Ang, I texted you to ask if you wanted to grab lunch.” Matter of fact. 

Lunch doesn't mean lunch and they both know it. But she's still buzzing from this morning, still rolling over that weak and forgetful orgasm in her mind. Alex doesn't disappoint her like that and, she thinks, she deserves it. She deserves his beard scraping the inside of her thighs until their red and tender and she can't remember her name beneath the ice-hot rush that slams into her a fourth time. She even enjoys having him fuck her after, when she's all jittery and twitching with overstimulation.

Angelica taps out another line on whatever she's working on to distract her from the sudden rush of heat between her thighs. She tries not to think of Pavlov and dogs and what it means that Alex grinning at her like that has her squeezing her thighs together. “Lunch sounds good. Besides,” she doesn't look up, her mouth runs for her on a ghost of her morning fantasy, “I've got something to tell you.” 

She doesn't need to look at him to see the flash of concern. She knows where his mind is headed, to Eliza, to his other women, to all the times he forgot to bring condoms to his office and shuddered and came inside her anyway. 

“Cool,” is what he says, and, “Meet me in my office? We'll order something.” 

His office is more like a coatroom, cramped and tiny with no windows at all. But he likes it, and so does Angelica when she forgets that it means he was promoted over her that many times. 

Now is a time when she likes it. Alex backing her against his desk, lips at her throat. “What is it?” he asks, after sucking a wet spot into her neck. “What did you want to tell me?” 

All she can do is huff because when he asks, his hands are busy shoving up her skirt. She didn't wear nylons, of course, so he goes straight for the panties, teasing his hand down the center. She doesn't want to tell him anymore, as he pushes his fingers to dig the damp fabric in. She's been wet since he was at her desk, ready for him for about an hour now. 

Scowling, she choses to ignore him and thread her fingers through his hair. He tastes like coffee and smoke, despite promising he quit his pack-a-day habit and he kisses her like he already knows. But he always kisses her like that. He always kisses her like his life depends on it, like he wants her, like he needs her. 

Something builds in her throat, climbing like a vine up from the pit of her stomach, knotting around her neck and threatening to choke her out. She catches on it, like an idiot.

Angelica doesn't want this to end, she doesn't want to lose the strange half adversarial, half loving embrace that Alex gives her. The lunches, the fights, the actual challenge and spontaneity. He's a break from the boring and the meaningless and she needs it, god if she didn't have it she’d go insane.

The emotion swells as Alex's pen-calloused hand curves over her cheek. “Angelica,” he says in a way she knows is not the first time he's said it in the past few seconds. “What did you want to tell me.” 

Her voice cracks. “I took a new job, John and I are moving to London.” 

She wanted him to be angry, to yell about not knowing about her not telling. He looks devastated instead, wide eyes shining with a moment of fear. “Like... New London, right? Just a couple hours away? Angie--”

Alex cuts himself off and his hands fall away from her. He scrubs his face and asks instead: “Tell me you're kidding, Ang, please?” 

“No one but George knows yet, I haven't told my parents or my sister's. I just wanted to tell you.” 

“You're moving to London? Christ when do you leave?” 

“Next month.” 

He gasps like the air has been sucked out of him, takes a few steps back. She knows, she's heard his story, he hates people leaving him. He hates when they tear themselves from their lives. But she's just his fling, she tried to tell herself this a million times over. She's just his fling. She's just his fling. 

Alex scrubs his hand over his face again, tears shining in big dark eyes. He doesn't ask her to stay, he doesn't cling to her and kiss her as she straightens her skirt and slips her shoes back on. 

“Angie I--” 

“I know.” And she does. She does in some part of her that isn't pounding out this complex rhythm of denial. “I do too.” 


End file.
